Second-line parade food vendors face municipal crackdown

City officials who announced earlier this month that the city would
begin citing unlicensed vendors at Sunday-afternoon second-lines shook
up the people who flock to weekly parades, hosted by social aid and
pleasure clubs.

View full sizeMatthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune archiveA food vendor at the Family Ties second-line parade was photographed in October.

"This is the talk of the town. Like they say: This
is what's trending," said occasional second-line vendor Linda Green, a
member of the Lady Rollers club who for years sold food at parades,
where she became known as "the Yakamein Lady" for her signature soup.

Each
week's four-hour second-line parade makes several stops at neighborhood
businesses, often bars, where a group of food vendors also set up.

But
the news left 15-year food-vendor Darren West, ,known as Bittles with
the Vittles, unsure about what to do. According to city code, unlicensed
vendors can be fined $500. But no city permits allow food and drink
vendors to follow a moving parade, as second-line vendors have done for
years.

Earlier
this month, at the annual preseason meeting of the New Orleans Social
Aid and Pleasure Club Task Force, a collection of clubs, city officials
including Romy Samuels from the Department of Finance and Lucas Diaz
from the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Engagement warned about
stepped-up vendor enforcement.

Currently, New Orleans vendor laws
include detailed guidelines for Jackson Square artists; peanut and candy
sellers; Mardi Gras parade hawkers, who can't sell either silly string
or stink bombs; and people who sell precious metals and stones in
temporary quarters, who require permits signed by "three property
taxpayers of the city stating that the applicant is of good moral
character."

Also, an entire section is devoted to people who sell cut flowers from pushcarts.

But
there's nothing that can make second-line vendors legal, said Tamara
Jackson, head of the task force, who said that at this point, many
vendors -- whom clubs consider a vibrant part of their tradition -- have
opted to stay home rather than risk being fined on Sunday at the first
parade of the 10-month "second-line season."

Hutcheson said that
he will be there on Sunday -- at the Valley of Silent Men parade in
Central City -- but merely to talk with vendors and to trade information
that could lead to new city policy, tailor-made to the tradition.

"It's not best practice to put a square peg into a round hole," Hutcheson said. "Sometimes you need to drill a new hole."

At most parades, there are a dozen longtime vendors and a dozen other less-regular sellers.

So,
numbers-wise, it isn't a logistical nightmare, said former Councilman
Oliver Thomas, vice president of the task force and a Sunday parade
regular, who suggested that clubs submit their routes to the city and
that a certain number of vendors be permitted along the route.

The
task force supports a ban on alcohol sales on the streets, where
vendors can't check IDs and often put themselves in competition with
legally licensed bars. More vendors began selling alcohol after
Hurricane Katrina, when many neighborhood bars were still shuttered,
said Jackson, who like others, believes that alcohol vendors may have
prompted the new scrutiny.

"People started selling all kinds of
alcohol and got the bar rooms mad -- and you can't blame them for being
mad," said food-vendor Lester Bell, 66, a retired river crane operator,
who said customers often come straight from church looking for the
hamburgers he makes with seven different ingredients.

Vendor Rob
Dickens has a smaller-scale operation: He walks with the parade, rolling
a large insulated cooler mounted on a handtruck, selling water, juices
and -- at times after Katrina -- beer. Much of his profits, he said,
defray the cost of ribbons, bows, streamers, hats and shoes for his
club, the Goodfellas, which often needs extra money to outfit its youth
division, Goodfellas Kids, before its annual September parade, he said.

West,
a member of the Perfect Gentlemen club, has for 15 years spent most
Sundays standing over his big black grill cooking poultry, hot sausage
and pork chops served on fresh French bread with his homemade barbecue
sauce.

West's grill is mounted onto a trailer that he pulls behind
his truck, while Bell's grill sits in the bed of his pickup. Both
traditions are unaddressed in city code.

Nonetheless, Bell said,
Sunday parade-goers wouldn't last four hours without food vendors.
"People get hungry. They got to eat somewhere," he said.

Dickens echoed that point, about his rolling cooler.

"Sometimes you have to go at least a mile to get to the first stop," he said. "And people got to have something to drink."